Sleepover (2004)

Best movie of this year hands down!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Sleepover (2004): Dir: Joe Nussbaum / Cast: Alexa Vega, Mika Boorem, Kallie Flynn Childress, Scout Taylor-Compton, Sara Paxton: Another mindless teen comedy worth sleeping through. It suggests adventure when entering that next stage of growth but it mainly plays as an encore for vulgar sexual humour where these girls get away with behaviour that perhaps they should not. Four girls about to enter high school are talked into participating in a risky scavenger hunt. The catch being that the mother of one of the girls believes that they are having a slumber party. Lame concept deteriorates into numerous situations to get a guy's boxer shorts and the crown at the dance, etc. Director Joe Nussbaum has little sense of timing and relies mainly on flashy locations. Alexa Vega of Spy Kids fame heads the cast as the girl initially challenged with this nonsense. Mika Boorem plays her best friend proving that if one person walks into stupidity then another must follow as a rule of friendship. Sara Paxton makes an appearance and it is about as bad as her mermaid film where she is basically cast to look good. Kallie Flynn Childress and Scout Taylor-Compton round out the girls and between them all they have the combined personality of a pair of dirty underwear. None of this is funny as it plays as the latest sex teen romp worth the sleeping pills to get through. Score: 2 / 10

I really do like this movie. I have read a lot of the reviews and a lot did not like it. But, that's OK. I could see a lot of things that I could question. I am amazed at watching these kids act. To me this movie is like a Junior High "American Graffiti" about the mischief of high school students one night before school starts. There's car taking, cop embarrassing, love, and so on. An unforgettable night for sure.Julie, Hannah, Farrah, and Yancey were not really planning to leave the house. But Stacie, the quick thinking, rotten to the core, villain comes up with a scavenger hunt that easily gives her team the advantage over Julie and gang. Stacie has lovely things to say, "Steve Phillips-dream on", "You're Orange", "She broken", "that was excruciating." It's Hannah that has no fear in taking them on. All the while Julie is rather uptight about the idea. Especially stealing a pair of Steve's boxer shorts. By the way, Steve is Julies heart-throb and Hannah convinces her that this is the reason it will help establish who she is in high school. Julie's feeling is what a large part of what the movie is about: getting caught.(by parents, night club security, Pro Tec security, Steve Phillips-all for a bit of suspense).The two teams get on with the game. Luckily Yancey has access to an electric car whose father said she could use in case of emergency. She admits that the fact that they need a car for the scavenger hunt is an emergency. Stacie is so sure they will win they take the hunt a little more like the slow and confidant while Julie and team approach it dead serious.One event important that neither team realizes is that Steve and a friend see a girl in a red dress on a skate board comes rolling right in front of them while they are in his jeep at a stop sign. As desirable as he is to girls, he obviously wants to find out who this girl is, even referring to his elementary school picture annual. That girl is Julie. Stacie's team sees them ride by why they have been buying juicers and suddenly have to jump in the car and catch up. Both teams reach the high school parking lot at the same time and thus tie.From there they go into the high school dance. The winner is the one that gets the crown. From here is the movie like every other teen or tween movie. Is it predictable. You have a high school, a dance, mostly high school students, a pretty good band. Maybe things go good or not so good. Or even both. Whatever happens to Julie, Farrah, Yancey, and Hannah, it seems like a night they will remember for a long time e. But, this movie had a lot of things that had to happen, good or bad in order for this movie to have been made.

First impressions can be misleading. This seemed a fun romp, the sort of thing that gets labelled as girlie and which I tend to find addictive to the point of wanting to rate it as 10 or 9 or, in this case 8. This does not appear to have anything like the depth of Heathers or Clueless or Practical Magic, etc, so 10 felt wrong. It did not seem to be at the level of addictive sugar of lesser depth, so 9 felt wrong. Yet it is still addictive, to those who like this sort of girlie romp? It is also the best for Sara Paxton that I have, so far. It is a summer-before-high-school story. Played by 15 year olds, mostly, acting as 14 year olds. Unusual. I find that it might be interesting to compare this with John Tucker Must Die, a thong story that gets much better IMDb user ratings than this despite me considering it to be a potential equal marred by quality aspects. So, that is 17s played by 20s?, it looked really wrong to me and sounded even more wrong, first viewing. It is a boxer shorts story and the comments make me wonder how many of them are by secret girlies rather than by secret boys. * For me, the power comes by trying to consider what it is trying to say. It is addictive sugar, yes, but to me it is also a parable about the 1990's and 80's and earlier. Early in the story, dad is grumbling about the kitchen taps, his test of the water makes an indicator turn blue. The house is going to have a baby boy? He stays at home while his better half is taking a night off. He does not spend the evening dressing pretty, ready for when she returns, but potters with the plumbing while his daughter has a sleepover. During the 1980's I understand feminists to have been quietly trying to earn their understanding of 'trouser technique', working to qualify as effective secret men, a global disaster for anyone who happened to be weaker than what was needed for being on the same planet as this was happening on. It seemed to follow rules that I grew up on the receiving end of from my early years, living death. 80's and 90's boxer shorts world, where the weak are led astray and corrupted, I should expect this story to get reactions of horror from any who were physically male during that time. Except that I can watch it and consider it to be addictive sugar rather than a horrifying poison. This is a story that dives into the unmentionables and comes out smelling sweet. These girls are real horror and it is accepted because they are learning trouser skills, bra in the fridge, boys will be boys. Just they also live in a world were fools are under pressure to get corrupted. * While getting to know this I was also watching three other DVDs that I purchased at the same time-ish. Push (2009), to me is a near equal to Sleepover even though it is looking at scary stuff that I can read as linked to this theme. Not cute sugar or obvious. I needed to watch it a few times just to acclimatise. Bynes' Sydney White (2007) and Tisdale's Picture This (2008). Not at this level but nice romps. Tisdale by the swimming pool even takes acting beyond where many modern actors can allow themselves to go. Many seem to rate Sleepover as 6 and John Tucker as 10. I consider that as examples of voting in a symbolic way. Consider quality, my personal idea of sense says that these actually merit 10 and 6. Both look at a difficult subject and Sleepover does that in an unusually effective way that appears to have voters running away? So, could be that Tucker rates better than a six. Sleepover as 10 though, my sense of sense, a school story with class. Beware of superficial interpretations. Sleepover is a masterwork. Push is a flawed masterwork. But both are masterworks.

Okay, here we go. Vega's character is crushing on a guy whose apparently only attributes is being cute and riding a skateboard. Wow! Amazing! How shallow! The fat girl's only chance at a relationship comes from the chubby sound guy not the male model wannabe. So are you trying to say that it is okay for the fat, unpopular people just need to hang with each other while the cute skinny people need to be with each other? Just once I would like to see the fat, ugly unpopular kid get the supermodel girl or guy. But this is the lie that Hollywood wishes to put out there. If you don't look like you should be on the cover of a magazine then you are useless to the world. It is an okay movie if there is nothing else on or if you don't have paint drying. Watch it on cable but please don't waste money renting it.